Computer repair, tech and Norton Internet Security renewals

Author: PCRepairMan

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When starting the program for the first time go to the top menu and select:Options > Set file associations > Images only > OK
Now all images will open in this nifty program, it’s good and fast.

Note that with the latest Windows 10 updates, you need to go to Settings > Default Apps and set IrfanView as your default viewer. Some Windows updates are known to actually remove IrfanView altogether!

Resizing an image with Irfanview

Resizing images really depends on what you want to achieve as an end result. There are a few common scenarios here:

You want to resize pictures to keep the file size down because you are sending by email. This option is usually when sending family pictures or work images to a colleague.

You want to create an avatar, logo or smaller image from the original image.

You want to crop a section of the image and resize it afterwards.

In each of these cases, we shall be using the resize dialog box so let’s see how to open this now.

Open Irfanview from the shortcut or All Programs menu, and click on File > Open.

In the box that opens, navigate to the image you want to resize. Double click it or click on the Open button.

The image will open up in the main Irfanview window.

From the toolbar menu at the top, click Image and select Resize/Resample. This will open the Resize/Resample image dialog box which is where you will select the settings that will be applied to your final image.

Now we want to either use some of the handy presets you see to the right side or manually add our image sizes. Think of 800 x 600 pixels as a landscape orientation, postcard sized image and you won’t be far wrong. This is an ideal size to send pics to family and friends by email and not have them clogging up their inbox. Most digital cameras now have extremely high pixel count so your original could be something like 2992 x 2000. This is obviously a landscape image because the first figure quoted is always the width, the second being the height. Resizing this image to 800 x 600 would work as landscape photos are generally close to a 4:3 ratio (although that example of 2992 x 2000 is not quite 4:3). Because some stretching of the image would occur in that case, we can actually check the box preserve aspect ratio. Now, typing in your desired width should alter the height accordingly and vice versa, resulting in a non-stretched image. It’s up to you if you want to apply sharpen after resample, this is generally better when going to a very small image such as used for icons and avatars, so I would generally avoid it for larger photos. For images on web pages such as WordPress powered sites, a width of 500 pixels (px) is usually sufficient for the content areas, going down to 150 px where we are wrapping text around the image.

In the Size Method box, put a tick next to Resample (better quality), and using the dropdown arrow, select Lanczos filter (slowest). What we are doing when resizing is effectvely getting rid of pixels, so the image needs to have a degree of loss applied to it that the human eye can’t see that well. The jpeg format is called a ‘lossy’ format for this reason. When you see a pixellated image, this is generally because it has been compressed a bit too much and too many critical pixels have been lost.

When you have the settings the way you want them, click on the OK button. Irfanview renders the image in its new size, although it may still be zoomed in or out. Use the + or – magnifying glass on the toolbar to zoom in or out until you see 100% displayed on the lower toolbar of Irfanview. This is your actual image size, as rendered by your monitor.

IMPORTANT NEXT STEP

You currently have the resized file in the main Irfanview window but it isn’t saved. Most photographs are better quality when they are original and making them smaller reduces quality, so we generally don’t save the image at this point. We do a File > Save As. Think of this as duplicating the file and you won’t go wrong, we are saving another copy of the image but in a different size. You have the chance to navigate to a new folder (I usually create one called Resized) and save the image with a descriptive name, something like:

dave-birthday-party-may-2014.jpg

I like to keep all filenames lowercase and separate words with hyphens as it’s much better for search engines and for web server semantics when uploaded to the web.

Saving in Jpeg format is generally good for photos, it results in smaller file sizes. Slide the quality slider up to 100 for best quality though.

Now all that remains is to click on Save and you are done.

I hope that helped to clear up a bit of resizing mystery, please drop me a comment below if you have any questions or just to let me know it helped.

I have a talented client who is involved in greetings card design. She was looking for ways to sell her unique designs so I suggested a few of the best known and some of the more obscure ones I have come across. Here is the list I came up with….

I have been in the market for a new NAS drive to replace the Synology NAS that has propped up my company’s data storage requirements for the last few years. As with many companies, we have outgrown our backup storage and so we opted to go for something pretty future-proof. Well, for the next five years anyway…

What I particularly like about the QNAP system is that it oozes functionality. Nothing elaborate in terms of style or base technology, but there are a raft of free apps to do just about anything you need to. This means that it makes good sense when you need to install for small, medium or large businesses as there is some scalability there. You can run Virtual Machines (VMs) on there so it becomes far more than just a dumb NAS box. It also integrates nicely with a Windows Server environment, taking identities from the Active Directory and bringing them over into its own environment.

Build quality

The box itself is quite well made and fairly compact. We went with a 4-bay unit that we popped some 4TB drives into and got our overall storage capacity up to 8TB (more on that later).

Features and concept

The TS-453A 4G NAS server is said to be designed for small to medium sized businesses, allowing its users to use the NAS as a storage device and a multitasking and multifunctional light-weight server. It is powered by a decent Quad-core Intel® Celeron® N3150 CPU and there is dual-channel 4/8GB DDR3L-1600 RAM (upgradable to 8GB).

There are 2 Gigabit LAN ports which allow connection to 2 separate networks and the hard drives are SATA 6Gb/s. The TS-453A can deliver up to 224 MB/s read speeds which is not too shabby.

Unusually the TS-453A can automatically increase the processor’s clock rate from 1.6GHz to 2.08GHz when performing CPU-intensive tasks.

There is AES 256-bit encryption for both full NAS volume and shared folders, which ensures the safety of sensitive business data that may be stored on the drives. A nice touch is that the TS-453A features an Intel® AES-NI hardware-accelerated encryption engine. This helps to drive transfer speeds theoretically up to 224 MB/s, which is a welcome boost to system performance & security.

Home video streaming users will like the 4K (H.264) video playback and 1080P/4K video real-time transcoding right from the NAS to an HD or 4K display. It also has 1080p video transcoding to convert videos to universal formats that can be smoothly played on PCs, mobile devices and Smart TVs. There is real-time and offline 4K video transcoding which we didn’t have chance to test but sounds good.

Interface

This QNAP box uses QTS, which gives a super-slick NAS experience. The interface is a no-frills, classic Linux look – functional and fast. We found that the intelligent desktop allows you to search for functions extremely quickly (there are lots of them!) and running multiple application windows was not a problem, even when we loaded multiple apps and tasks at the same time.

Disaster recovery

The TS-453A runs something called Real-Time Remote Replication (RTRR). In short, this supports real time and scheduled data backups to either an FTP server or another QNAP NAS. It also synchronizes files to a remote folder from a local folder. What we liked was the rsync support which pushed our data to our remote server at our pre-programmed schedule. If you are interested in this, the push/pull supports Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Microsoft Azure, ElephantDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage and a few more.

A nice feature is that you can restore files with the ‘QTS Storage Manager’ snapshot tool. You can:

take snapshots for both volumes and LUN (up to 256 snapshots per volume or LUN and maximum 1024 snapshots per NAS)

quickly clone a volume /LUN snapshot as a local volume without interrupting the system’s current operation

set up the system to automatically take a snapshot of the volume before backup via ssync/RTRR (even when the file is opened).

Server virtualization

You can host virtual machines on your TS-453A via QNAP’s VM hypervisor called ‘Virtualization Station’. Access to these is provided by VNC or a web browser interface. The TS-453 and the VMs can share the same LAN port as it uses high-speed virtual switches and Software-defined networks (SDNs). We noticed little or no lag in our testing which was impressive.

QNAP’s ‘Container Station’ integrates LXC and Docker virtualization technologies, allowing you to operate multiple isolated Linux systems. For the Docker fans out there, you can also download apps from the built-in Docker Hub Registry.

File searching

QNAP’s file searching is impressive and when we loaded up a Gmail backup with over 15,000 emails it searched very quickly to locate our email, offering a preview of it. There’s also an online document app which adds edit and preview functionality to files.

Cross-platform file sharing

The TS-453 supports SMB/CIFS, NFS, and AFP protocols which means that you can file share across Windows, Mac and Linux/UNIX networks. Data, logs and ISO images of CDs and DVDs can be centrally stored on the TS-453A and protected by an integrated antivirus solution. The Windows Active Directory and LDAP services enable system administrators to configure user permissions by using an existing Windows AD server, LDAP server or built-in LDAP service. The TS-453A supports SAMBA v4 and can act as a Windows domain controller to manage privilege settings.

Hard drives

We went with the 4TB Western Digital ‘Red’ drives that are specifically designed for continuous use and general NAS usage. They are pretty much silent when spinning and come with the WD 3 year guarantee (register for this when you get the drives). We setup a raid array that gave us some redundancy but you could go all-out and combine all the drives into one big fat storage pool. Your call, but make sure that you have backup whichever way you go. Pushing to Amazon S3 is a good call.

Verdict

All in all, this unit excels at being a NAS drive and adds superb additional functionality into the mix. It’s versatile and cross platform and doesn’t require additional software or licences to perform. The simple, clear interface makes some normally heavy technical tasks quite painless. It gives the current offerings from NAS mainstays such as Synology a real wake-up call to add some useful features to their operating systems because many SMBs need these additional tools now.

We’d suggest that you give it a try and we’re pretty confident that you’ll be a convert.

I had been searching for a GoPro or similar action camera to record an upcoming driving day experience, so thought that I’d share my experiences here about the Campark ACT74 action camera and accessories that I finally bought.

This product is an Amazon best-seller so I read the reviews on there, looked at some decent YouTube GoPro and ACT74 comparison videos (shown below) and made my decision to purchase one. I was still quite sceptical, as often the positive reviews can be faked and likewise the negative ones can be from people overly fussy about irrelevant things (e.g. “there was too much packing material so I gave this item just one star…”). In fairness, the Amazon review system is overall a good indicator, especially when the number of reviewers for a product enters the hundreds.

So, this camera retails for UK £39.99 and is pitched firmly against the GoPro entry level Hero 5 Session. The latter, at the time of writing, is about £139.99 so there is a large price difference. You can effectively buy 3 Campark ACT74s for the price of one GoPro and treat yourself to some more accessories with the change! Another notable difference when comparing the two seems to be the 4k video. Surprisingly, the more expensive GoPro Session doesn’t have it but the cheaper CamPark does.

So is it worth sticking with the market leader (GoPro) and the company who actually popularised these sports cameras in the first place? After all, surely they have a wealth of experience in providing quality items, and quality is where the cheap brands fail, right? Read on…

ACT74 – First impressions

So the Campark ACT74 kit arrived the next day at no charge thanks to Amazon’s excellent Prime service. First impressions were of a well-packed item that comes in a very neat travel case. The case carries all the supplied accessories which were good quality items.

The kit included:

An IP68 waterproof case, waterproof to 30 Metres. You would use this for underwater filming.

2 batteries, each providing a recording time up to 180 minutes, available after a full charge of 2 hours

A USB charging cable

Wrist straps and camera enclosure

Cleaning cloth, sticky mount pads

Short wire strap and cable ties

Numerous plastic mounting brackets and thumbscrews

Coming with lots of accessories already gives this camera an edge. If it’s easy to mount then you can get up and running straight away.

Waterproof case testing

My test of the waterproof case involved initially submersing it in a deep sink; admittedly not the 30 metre depth test that it could have been! I did this without the camera in at first for 30 minutes, then with it inside once I was certain no drops came in. All seemed good, and there is a spare rear cover with a new seal supplied which is nice to have. Remember, each time you put the camera in this waterproof case that you will open and close the access flap (the rear cover), so it will be a point of failure for water ingress eventually. I found that I used the waterproof case for most filming rather than the supplied ‘open’ case that was also sent, but the latter leaves the lens open to dust, scratching, damage etc. and the bespoke waterproof case is not much larger than the camera itself.

The rear LCD screen

The rear LCD screen measures 2 inch (5cm) across the diagonal and has a resolution of 960 x 240 pixels which is fine for reviewing your footage. You can see the overall layout and whether the video is likely to be over or underexposed etc. In general the default exposure settings work well. The screen is bright enough to be seen on a sunny day. This obviously eats into the battery life to display anything, but cleverly the ACT74 automatically shuts off the screen to maximise life when it can.

Video and photos

Video output format is mp4 (H.264) which is about the most compatible for sharing or working with and supports 4K UHD. The photos have a resolution of 2MB, 5MB, 8MB, 12MB and 16MB but unless memory card space is really at a premium then you’d probably leave this set at the maximum. I’d say that current smartphones way exceed the quality of the photos you get from the Campark ACT74, but you’ll probably be using this for filming rather than stills, and will more than likely have a smartphone with you at all times too.

Video resolution runs from 4K down to 720P in these increments:

4K/30fps

2.7K/30fps

1080P/ 60fps

1080P/ 30fps

720P/90fps

720P/60fps

720P/30fps

If you’re not understanding the video resolution modes then, simply put, 4k is super sharp and you’ll only notice the difference on 4K televisions or PC monitors. 720P is still pretty good, especially if you’ll be sharing it or uploading to YouTube, social websites or similar. For most real-world usage, you’ll probably leave it in 1080P 60fps mode like I did and this will give you a good compromise of video quality against files storage sizes. Buying 2 memory cards helps to give you some more emergency storage and protects against card failure stopping your day’s recording. Do read on for some important information on fake cards though!

Video output format is PAL (UK Standard before DVB-T) and NTSC (USA standard) through the HDMI port. There is a slow-motion recording setting too if you want to have a bit of fun.

Audio in my few weeks of testing was passable but nothing special, the microphone range is not huge and wind noise can be high on a blustery day. A borrowed GoPro Hero 5 session had similar audio quality though and I have seen that the more expensive models aren’t much better. It is what it is, and it’s one of the reasons why most action videos you see out there have music soundtracks.

Lens angle and exposure

The lens angle is a usable 170 degrees. For general sports camera use this seems very good and it complements a limited angle smartphone or SLR camera very well, giving you a much broader variety of video. One of my main aims is to have this as an in-car camera, recording track days and the like, and it performed very well on a recent test. I’ll upload a snippet for you to see later on. Exposure settings range from -3 to +3 and this gives you decent enough control. The auto-exposure settings worked well when I tested it against direct sun, shaded areas and indoor. Again, don’t expect stunning SLR-quality photos from this device, but that is the same for any currently available action cam including those from GoPro, Sony, Garmin etc.

Battery life, charging and specifications

Two batteries were provided in the kit which is great. They are the rechargeable Li-ion type. The kit doesn’t come with a standalone charger but the camera itself can be used to charge them so this isn’t a deal-breaker. Simply plug in the provided USB cable to the side of the camera and plug the other end into a USB output charger (1 Amp or greater) or your laptop/desktop computer. There is a dual charger available for a few pounds but I didn’t need this. For me, the less I need to carry the better.

The battery life is difficult to quantify as the unit shuts the screen off after a minute and the whole unit will auto power off after 1, 3 or 5 minutes if not in use. For a real world test, I managed to film for a whole day using the two supplied batteries. This gave me 4 hours of HD 1080p footage (which was filmed over a 7 hour period) and the second battery still had some life in it.

Transferring files

This is done through the USB interfaces of your computer. You select ‘USB mode’ when plugged in to a computer and you’ll see all your files there, accessible at USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Another way is to simply plug your Micro SD card into a card reader connected to a computer.

Dimensions and weight

The case is a textured plastic material, buttons are easy to use and have a reassuring ‘click’ when pressed. General build quality seems good.

Buying an SD Card for the Campark ACT74

This camera supports a single micro SD card up to 64GB maximum. However, please note that there are an incredible number of FAKE cards on the market at the moment. What the sellers of these cards do is take a relatively inexpensive unbranded 8GB card or similar and change the settings on it so that it shows up as a 64GB card. They will then duplicate the writing on the card and put it in accurately copied packaging. The problem is because they can make upwards of £10 per card they are up for sale everywhere, even in big retail stores. Even the feedback from their buyers is often good because the buyer doesn’t realise it’s a fake until the 8GB is used up, which in the case of a camera that overwrites old files and can ‘loop’ all day long it may never be. Some cards do give errors in some devices though but unless you do some more advanced testing like I did, you’ll never know.

At this point I’ll mention that I have bought SDHC memory cards from a few places and received some fakes. In each case I got my money back but lost time messing about with returns systems and complaints procedures.

Anyway, for UK buyers I would definitely recommend buying at least 2 of these genuine 32GB SanDisk cards so you have decent capacity for a day of filming and the price is good. Using 2 allows you to rotate them and also reduces your chances of missing the all-important filming if one of them dies (which memory cards do from time to time). They have a higher speed class too and this makes a big difference to the use of the camera, don’t buy the slower cards as they will drive you mad, making your device feel sluggish overall.

Verdict

If you’re reading this because you wanted to do a Campark ACT74 vs GoPro Hero 5 session comparison, then that’s where I found myself going a few weeks back. The current ranges of version 5 and 6 GoPros have some pretty negative feedback, especially for reliability, so that’s one reason I went with a cheaper camera. I’d hate to pay upwards of 3 times the price and have a microphone fail or similar and GoPro seem to have more than their fair share of hardware and software issues.

For a unit that can be used as an action camera, security camera, dash cam and webcam the Campark ACT74 really does excel. Add built-in time lapse, slow motion, loop recording features and top it all off with 4K video and you really can’t go wrong for the price.

These are the instructions to follow when renewing the licence on Kaspersky Internet Security. I’ll presume that you have a new licence key to hand from a recent version and that the product is the same (eg not Kaspersky Pure etc). If you don’t have a new licence yet, you’ll find them for sale at discounted prices here [Hint: search for ‘kaspersky internet security 3 user’ or however many computers you need to protect]

You can buy the new licence in advance of your current product expiring, but you don’t need to wait until the existing licence has expired to install it any more. Kaspersky now seems to add on the remaining days from your current licence to your new licence, providing the product is the same.

First, open Kaspersky. The quickest way is to double click the icon in your system tray (bottom right of your desktop screen). If you can’t see it there, use the little arrow on the left to expand the icons and find it. It’s a red letter K like this one below:

Now, look in the bottom right of the Kaspersky window and click on ‘License: xx days remaining’ (where xx is your actual days remaining).

Now click on the ‘Enter activation code’ button.

Finally, type in your activation code, or copy and paste it if you received it by email. Be careful to get EXACTLY the right code as some letters do look similar! You can copy and paste the whole of the new licence key into the first entry field, it will separate them for you.

Press the ‘Save activation code’ button and you’re done. Give the PC a restart, open Kaspersky again and you should be able to see your licence has the correct amount of days remaining.

I sell full versions in my shop here at discounted prices that are often much cheaper than renewal. Grab the code from those and you won’t need to install anything, just follow the method above.

Since I wrote the original avgidseh.sys fix article, there have been lots of other affected PCs that have passed through our workshop. This is not a rogue update fault now as it was back in late 2010, rather an issue that is, as yet, untrackable to a single problem. AVG are getting the blame for many bad startup errors as the users only see the last driver to load which is often AVGIDSEH.SYS. I have, however, noted that applying an AVG-specific fix works in many cases.

What we shall be doing is renaming the AVG folders so they are not loaded on startup. For UBCD4Win, start the computer with the disc inserted and boot from it. This may involve changing the boot order that your PC or laptop uses. Once we have a new ‘environment’ – that is the computer is running from the CD – then we can start a file explorer such as A43, Agent Ransack, Xplorer2 or Free Commander. This will give us access to the files on the hard drive. Folders to rename are as follows:

Windows XP and 2000 (Note: AVG2011 does not run on Windows 2000 so forget a reinstall afterwards!)

C:\Program Files\AVG – This is also named C:\Program files(x86)\AVG when you have a 64bit operating system

C:\Documents and settings\All users\Application data\AVG8

C:\Documents and settings\All users\Application data\AVG9

C:\Documents and settings\All users\Application data\AVG10

Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10

C:\Program Files\AVG – This is also named C:\Program files(x86)\AVG when you have a 64bit operating system

C:\ProgramData\AVG8

C:\ProgramData\AVG9

C:\ProgramData\AVG10

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\AVG8

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\AVG9

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\AVG10

Example:

rename C:\Program Files\AVG to C:\Program Files\OLDAVG

Once renamed, they will no longer load on startup.

Avgidseh.sys is not the only possible cause…

Now I like to run a CHKDSK while still in this ‘running from cd’ environment as it fixes any errors on the hard drive. These are often caused by the PC being shut down while writing to the drive and can also be the main reason the computer failed to start, don’t always blame AVG because the avgidseh.sys driver was the last thing to load! In UBCD4Win we would run Disk Check which does a full scan and repair of the sectors on the hard drive. Just fire it up, tell it your target drive (usually c:) and let it run. Have a cuppa as this takes a while.

The professional method

If you want to do a complete scan and repair of your disk using a professional repair tool that we use in our workshop and lab, you should investigate HDD Regenerator. We have carried out a full review of HDD Regenerator here. It has fixed the majority of the faulty drives we see that cause constant ‘looping’ of the Windows boot procedure and it’s in daily use in our workshop. It’s not too expensive and is a better solution than the free methods we list above for many people as it is much easier to use. It also blows CHKDSK into the weeds for being able to recover data and salvage your hard drive. Where CHKDSK marks the sector as bad, HDDRegenerator actually recovers the data from it and moves it to a new, good sector. As mentioned, this tool isn’t free (it does give you a free trial) but you can buy it once and fix as many drives as you want with it. It also creates a simple to use bootable USB drive or CD/DVD disk for you. Any self-respecting PC geek or computer repair shop shouldn’t be without it in the toolkit.

As mentioned in other articles, despite AVG being a capable free antivirus, I heartily recommend the brilliant Kaspersky Pure as a set and forget internet security solution. Here is my method to get the cheapest Kaspersky Pure and be fully protected against viruses and malware.

Finally, let me know by commenting below if this avgidseh.sys fix works for you and please leave any other information you can share with the community.

Known as a a shebang or a bang line, this is just the characters at the very start of a Linux script. It is simply a hash or number sign followed by an exclamation point character (#!). This is then followed by the full path to the interpreter, for example /bin/bash

Think of it as a necessary code mark that tells the system the absolute path to the Bash interpreter and you’ll not have a problem.

If you need to execute a shell script and can’t get your head around the conflicting information out there, I’ll try to clear things up. There are quite a few ways to execute a shell script and each has its pros and cons. If you are coming from a Windows environment where the file extension dictates how we handle the file, then try not to think like this. A script can have no extension but still be run. So, let’s take a look at our four ways to execute a shell script.

Execute shell script by calling the filename (Method 1)

This method simply changes into the script’s containing directory and calls the script’s file name to execute it.

We can change into the directory first

Shell

1

$cd/usr/bin

and then call the script thus:

Shell

1

$./myscript

Now, my preferred method is to consolidate these 2 lines into 1 , calling it from any directory by simply adding the full path to the file:

Shell

1

$/usr/bin/myscript

If you have the shebang at the start of this script, then it will be executed by using the command interpreter that is specified directly after it.

Execute shell script by specifying an interpreter (Method 2)

You can also run a shell script by specifying the interpreter. You do this by adding the preferred interpreter within the command thus:

Execute the script using the bash interpreter

Shell

1

$bashmyscript

Execute the script using the sh interpreter

Shell

1

$shmyscript

There are usually several interpreters available such as bash, sh, csh, ksh and more. Note that if you use a different interpreter in the shebang, this will be overridden by the one you specify.

Execute shell script with . ./ (Method 3)

If you execute the shell script by using . ./ (aka ‘dot space dot slash’), it will not fork a sub shell and you’ll see it executed in the current shell.

Shell

1

$../myscript

Why do this? Well it’s normally used after we have changed something in the .bashrc or .bash_profile. Using this method of execution we won’t need to logout and login again.

Shell

1

2

3

4

5

$cd~

$../.bashrc

$../.bash_profile

Execute shell script with source command (Method 4)

source is a bash shell built-in command that executes the contents of the file, which is passed as argument, in the current shell. It has a synonym that you can use which is the dot or period (.)

This can replace the ‘dot space dot slash’ method.

Shell

1

2

3

source myscript[arguments]

.myscript[arguments]

A word of warning here though because ./ and source are not quite the same.

./myscript runs myscript as an executable file in a new shellsource myscript reads and executes commands in the current shell environment

To help further, ./myscript is not the same as . myscript, but . myscript is exactly the same as source myscript

Do you have a preferred method for executing shell scripts and if so, why? Let me know below.